8 of the Best (and Easiest) DIY Halloween Crafts

Nothing is sp-o-o-o-o-kier than finally having the opportunity to decorate your new home for the holiday but still making the decision to let Halloween pass by without even having a single pumpkin in or around your house. Where’s the holiday spirit?

Decorating your dorm room, apartment, house, or wherever it may be that you’re calling home right now doesn’t have to be expensive, so don’t let money be the thing that’s holding you back from getting into the spirit of the holiday. There are plenty of ways to decorate this Halloween without spending tons of cash.

Get ready to be the Jack Skellington of Halloween and make your home look wickedly cool during the month of October by checking out these 8 DIY Halloween decorations that are fun and easy to make.

Draw or print out 15 or more Halloween creatures or symbols. You may need to print less or more, depending on how long you want your banner to be. If you’re going to print out your pictures, I recommend resizing the images in Microsoft Word and fitting as many of your selected pictures on a page as possible to make the cutting out process easier.

Cut a small hole at the top of each figure you cut out, making the hole around the size of a thumbtack. This will be where you pull your string through. Loop your string through each of your pictures, leaving a gap of space between each picture.

For the final step, choose a good spot in the room where you’d like your banner to go. Using tape or thumbtacks, pin your banner along the top of your wall. This looks especially nice over windows! For a little more fun, you can use fairy lights instead of a string.

2. Glow-in-the-Dark Pumpkins

You’ll Need:

Pumpkins

Glow in the dark paint

Paintbrush

Use your brush to paint beautiful designs on as many pumpkins as you like. Leave the pumpkins outside or arrange them inside to have a beautiful sight when it’s dark.

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3. Jack o’ Lanterns

You’ll Need:

Large pumpkins

Spoon

Sharp knife

Pen

Tea lights

Using your knife, cut off the crown of the pumpkin. Remove the crown. Take your spoon and scoop out all of the seeds and juicy bits. Once you have your shell, you can use the marker to draw the scary face on your pumpkin. Then, use your knife to cut out the sections that you drew. Place a tea light inside of the pumpkin and replace the crown.

You now have a scary pumpkin that you can use to decorate your home! Bonus: You can roast the pumpkin seeds and have them for a snack later. You can also store the pumpkin insides that you scooped out to make pumpkin pie for later.

4. Ghoulish Paintings

You’ll Need:

Black or old-looking picture frame

Black or white construction paper

Crayons

Watercolor paints

Pastels

Colored pencils

Use your art tools to draw up some pictures that will scare your friends and family that come over to visit. You can look at these scary movie posters if you have trouble deciding what to draw. If you’re not an artist, don’t worry; you can also print out pictures to use. Once you’ve finished, you can put your spooktacular pictures in frames and place them around the room.

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5. Halloween Phrase Cut-Outs

You’ll Need:

Letter stencils

Black construction paper

A Sharpie

Scissors

Tape or thumbtacks

Trace letters onto the construction paper (don’t worry — the Sharpie will still show up on the dark paper). Cut out the letters and stick them on your walls to spell out popular Halloween phrases like “Boo”! Get creative!

6. Window Scene

You’ll Need:

Poster paper (whatever color you like)

Construction paper (whatever color you like)

Markers

Tape

Glue stick

String lights

Scissors

Tape measure

Using the tape measure, measure out the length and width of the window that you want your Halloween scene to be in. Cut out the poster paper to match those measurements. Now, think about what scene you’d like to display. You could have a silhouette of a witch flying on her broom, a monstrous face, or whatever you think would be awesome to have in your window. Once you have your idea, draw it out on your pieces of construction paper.

Use your scissors to cut out your pictures. Rub glue onto the backs and stick them to your poster paper. Have fun with the setup! After your scene is arranged, it’s time to put the scene into your window. Pull up the blinds in your chosen window. Put the scene against the glass, facing away from you.

Use tape to secure the scene to the window. You’ll now have a beautiful Halloween scene to show to all of your neighbors and friends.

7. Witch’s Brew

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You’ll Need:

Glass bottles

Red, blue, yellow, green food coloring

Labels

Double-sided tape

Water

As a college student, finding a couple of empty glass bottles shouldn’t be too hard. You can actually put these bottles back to work by turning them into bottles of witch’s brew! Start off by filling your bottles with water. Use the food coloring to come up with as many different colors in the containers as you can (do one red, one blue, one green, one yellow and then start combining the colors).

Shake well to get the color evenly spread. Stick the labels to your bottles using the double-sided tape. Then, display the new brews on your kitchen counter or wherever they’re likely to be seen by guests!

Your first step in making your zombie hands and gravestones is to zombify those mannequin hands. Use your most putrid green paint and coat each of the hands in it. Once the paint is dried, you can dot the hands with the fake blood, red Sharpie, or red lipstick. Set them aside to dry and then move on to making your grave markers.

Take your box cutter and cut your cardboard pieces into the shape of gravestones (think crosses, rounded tops, etc). After that, paint each gravestone black on both sides. Once they have dried, you can decorate them with white paint. Want to make your house seem even scarier? You can use phrases like “turn back now” or “watch your step” to frighten trick-or-treaters.

Secure your zombie hands and gravestones into the ground outside, making sure that the hands look as though they’re bursting up from the dirt.

I hope you all will take these DIY crafts and make them your own! Do you have some of your own DIY Halloween crafts that you’re proud of? Feel free to share it with everyone else by commenting down below!

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Hi there! My name's Britt and I'm a senior majoring in English major at Florida State University. I have these crazy, big dreams of traveling the entire world and writing novels in my spare time. I love music, food, and the Japanese culture. I plan on teaching English in Japan upon graduation from Florida State.
My first YA novel, Twisted, was published by Deep Sea Publishing Company in 2014. It won a Readers' Favorite Book Award that same year. Alongside schoolwork, I'm working hard on the second book in the Twisted series as well as a number of other novels.